The Bigtree alligator wrestling dynasty is in decline — think Buddenbrooks set in the Florida Everglades — and Swamplandia!, their island home and gator-wrestling theme park, is swiftly being encroached upon by a sophisticated competitor known as the World of Darkness.

Ava, a resourceful but terrified twelve year old, must manage seventy gators and the vast, inscrutable landscape of her own grief. Her mother, Swamplandia!’s legendary headliner, has just died; her sister is having an affair with a ghost called the Dredgeman; her brother has secretly defected to the World of Darkness in a last-ditch effort to keep their sinking family afloat; and her father, Chief Bigtree, is AWOL. To save her family, Ava must journey on her own to a perilous part of the swamp called the Underworld, a harrowing odyssey from which she emerges a true heroine.

My thoughts:

The Bigtree family lives
on an island near Florida. Grandpa Sawtooth Bigtree has been put in a mental
institution due to his “dementia” problem. Hilola Bigtree, the mother of the
Bigtree children we witness the stories of, has died due to cancer. Her husband
and three children who are left behind are in a very tough situation because
Hilola is the star of Swamplandia; people come to see her wrestle with
alligators. As if Swamplandia losing its appeal and star aren’t enough, they have
competition: a theme park called the World of Darkness. The father (Chief) and
the three children (Kiwi, Ossie and Ava) all have their own solutions for their
problems, of course…

The Chief is planning
the innovations they can bring to Swamplandia. The oldest child, Kiwi, says
that they should just sell the park but when nobody else in his family agrees
to it, he goes to the mainland and starts working at the World of Darkness in
order to “check out the competition.” At the same time, he has a desire to
learn and dreams of going to college. Getting weirder and weirder after their
mother’s passing, Ossia gets into spiritism in hopes of being able to contact
Hilola. She talks to spirits and even dates
some of them. The youngest, Ava, on the other hand is set on becoming as
good an alligator wrestler as their mother and saving the park.

Karen Russell is an
author who is rather crafty at bringing together fantasy and reality. She has a
very real way of showing how people hold onto places they think they belong to,
how some of them do just the opposite and run as far away as they can. She
shows how different people deal with the same problem in different ways and
none of their ways can actually be considered “wrong,” especially when dealing
with grief.

There’s the idea of
the naivety of childhood and what dangers it can bring throughout the story.
Accordingly, what happens to Ava when a guy called Bird Man is supposedly
helping her find Ossie, Ossie being left on the altar while she’s on the verge
or marrying a spirit make the reader angry, worried, revolt all at the same
time. If you’re looking for a weird book that brings together fantasy and
reality in a way that might hurt your insides, Swamplandia! might just be what
you’re looking for.